ONS Digital

Prynhawn da / Good afternoon and welcome to another weeknotes, bringing you the latest update from the Digital Publishing Division

So what’s been happening?

A number of colleagues attended a workshop to discuss the future of the WDA programme, which looks at enhancing access to ONS data through the data explorer and API tools.

Our Head of Editorial visited buzzfeed to meet some of the team and understand more about how they use our data. This is something we have been keen to explore further, following a popular presentation from Tom Smith at Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion who delivered the important message of how ONS data can be used to impact on policy

In other news …

Our publishing team have been working on a new metadata e-learning course for staff to help them understand the importance of metadata to help users find what they are looking for, through improved search results This follows on from the the introduction of a new set of metadata standards in November, which was developed as part of a major piece of work to improve the findability and consistency of ONS content.

A project is also underway to review the editorial standards, house style and guidance of how content is written and presented on our website. Following new guidance issued by the UK government, our publishing policy and standards team are looking at how our standards comply with the new guidance and how they meet users expectations. This will ensure consistency across the organisation, improving the quality of our content and ensuring it is accessible. 

Following the call for papers by the UNECE we are looking at how we can contribute to their annual conference on communicating statistics, with a focus on our digital developments over the last year.

and finally…

The programme for our digital festival is almost complete and I am really pleased with the line-up of guest speakers and internal presenters we have on the billing.. The event, which builds on the civil service capabilities plan to improve digital skills, will see a number of sessions offered to staff with a digital theme throughout the month of February. Watch this space for more information.